


When the War Comes

by HelenGrace



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Galaxy Garrison, Gen, Keith & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Keith and Pidge are unstoppable, Keith getting RILED, Mild Angst, Mild Language, Mild Spoilers, POV Keith (Voltron), Season 6 Spoilers, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 07:45:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15335169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenGrace/pseuds/HelenGrace
Summary: “Man, what if we had known each other back then? How long would it have taken us to find out what happened?”“Five minutes, tops.” Pidge laughed. “We would have decimated the Garrison.”Pidge and Keith knew the Galaxy Garrison was lying about the Kerberos mission. If only they had met sooner; they would have been unstoppable.





	When the War Comes

**Author's Note:**

> Oop! Here's my first foray into Voltron! I've always wanted to see more interaction between Keith and Pidge - I think they have more in common and more closely aligned motivations than they realize. Here's a short one-shot I couldn't get out of my head. There are mild season 6 spoilers, so beware! Enjoy!

Keith sat on the tip of the outcropping of the desolate planet they managed to land on. Shiro was awake. Shiro was Shiro again. The team was going home. As much as Keith could call the earth home. They were going back to the Garrison. The Garrison that _lied_ about Shiro, Matt, and Sam. The same garrison tasked with defending the earth.

_Keith stood so quickly his chair toppled behind him. “That’s impossible. Shiro doesn’t make errors, especially not errors like that. It’s piloting 101.”_   
_The commander couldn’t meet his eyes. “Listen son, I know you were close to Takashi,-”_   
_“He prefers Shiro.”_   
_The commander droned on, ignoring Keith, “But this was a classic case of pilot error. It happens. Space is dangerous, you would do well to remember that.”_   
_"This was not something that just happens, like a hangnail or a stubbed toe!” Keith cried. “There hasn’t been a fatal accident in space for decades, and no accidents due to pilot error in nearly a century! It doesn’t add up, and you know it!” Keith knew better than anyone - space shuttles were filled with so many redundancies and the training so rigorous - beginning in high school and continuing well past university - that pilot error was virtually unheard of, particularly for pilots as skilled as Shiro. No, this was something else, something much bigger._   
_“Look me in the eye, commander, and tell me this was Shiro’s mistake.”  
The commander turned toward his computer._

Small footsteps crunched, wrenched him from his thoughts - Pidge. Months stuck in close quarters gave the paladins the ability to identify each other by the sound of their footsteps, their sighs, coughs, their very essence.

“Hey. We’re going to wait a few hours before launching off. We want to give Shiro some time to rest and reorient himself.” Pidge sat beside him. “You can get some rest if you’d like, we can keep watch.”

“I’m fine, thanks. I don’t think I could if I tried,” Keith drew his knees up and rested his chin on them.

“Are you thinking about Shiro?”

“No? Yes? I’m thinking about going home, back to the Garrison, what they did to me. To you and your mother. To Shiro and your brother and father.”

Pidge was silent, she swung her feet over the cliff. She sighed and looked up. Pidge didn’t often reflect the weight of their experience, generally choosing to immerse herself so deeply into technology and problem-solving that she would just forget about everything else, even eating. More than once, one of the other paladins had to physically pick her up from whatever project she was working and and carry her to the dining area to get in at least one meal.

But occasionally, very occasionally, her shoulders would stoop, she would rub her hands over her face and walk to the the bridge to look at the clusters of stars and planets outside of the windows, for hours on end. It was easy to forget that Pidge was the youngest of them all: she knew everything about everything, and made sure to think at least four steps ahead. And yet, some days, she was just a 16 year old who missed her brother and father. Some days she was a war veteran with a thousand yard stare that could see past galaxies, just like the rest of them.

“I think about it every day. That’s why I joined the Garrison, you know. To find the truth. It never added up.”   
Keith chuckled. He’d heard the story some months ago. Only Pidge could manage to infiltrate the most elite and secure global institution dedicated to space exploration.

“Man, what if we had known each other back then? How long would it have taken us to find out what happened?” Keith mused. What were the odds that two people, personally affected by the Kerberos loss, had managed to become paladins of the most powerful weapon in the universe together? Keith wasn’t one for things like destiny or fate, but he did have a hard time believing it was coincidence.

“Five minutes, tops.” Pidge laughed. “We would have _decimated_ the Garrison.”

Keith lowered his legs, let them dangle over the edge of the cliff, swung them like Pidge. They sat there, watching the lions in the distance. The planet’s sun seemed to be in a perpetual sunset, which gave everything a golden glow. Green was shining particularly brightly.

_The day Keith walked out of the Garrison for the last time, he vowed his revenge. His boots crunched across the sands as he headed toward his hover bike. He turned one last time to look at the Galaxy Garrison campus. A bus of new recruits had just arrived. 50 more kids to make up for the loss of four people. Keith was content to wait - his time to strike would come, and he would make sure everyone on earth knew what really had happened to the Kerberos crew. He hopped on his bike and revved up. Shiro’s day would come._

“Do you think they’ll be ready? For when the war comes?” He asked.  
“I honestly… I honestly don’t know. The way they covered up the Kerberos mission and tied Shiro down leads me to believe it will be an uphill battle for Dad. They don’t seem particularly keen on dealing with reality.”

“Well, showing up with Voltron will light a fire under their ass,” Keith said.   
Pidge’s laugh was loud and bright. “That is, if a certain green paladin doesn’t get arrested for treason and espionage when she returns. Voltron would be kind of useless then.”

Keith elbowed her side, “Hey, we have four other giant space alien cat war machines. I don’t think jail will be a huge issue.”

Pidge lay her head on Keith’s shoulder, “Whatever happens, we’ll make sure they can’t cover us up, lie about us, or deny the truth. You and me, Keith. We’ll make sure the Garrison pays attention. We’ll make them regret their decisions.”

Keith leaned his head onto Pidge’s. He looked ahead, across the universe, imagined that pale blue dot lost somewhere in the outskirts of the Milky Way.

“You’re goddamned right, Pidge. You and me.”


End file.
